In today's radio communications networks a number of different technologies are used, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), Global System for Mobile communications/Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution (GSM/EDGE), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax), or Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), just to mention a few possible technologies. A radio communications network comprises radio base stations providing radio coverage over at least one respective geographical area forming a cell. User equipments are served in the cells by the respective radio base station and are communicating with respective radio base station. The user equipments transmit data over an air interface to the radio base stations in uplink (UL) transmissions and the radio base stations transmit data over an air interface to the user equipments in downlink (DL) transmissions.
Modem and future radio communications networks are expected to support more increasingly higher bit rates with even stricter requirements on the Quality Of Service (QoS). QoS may be defined as the ability to provide different priority to different applications, user equipments, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow. In particular, the QoS in terms of coverage for uplink (UL) traffic is one of the most challenging areas to handle. This interest has increased due to the big interest of operators worldwide for supporting Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.
In addition to the more classical approaches such as power control and inter-cell interference coordination, frequency hopping is one of the low-complexity techniques that may offer gains in terms of frequency and interference diversity. In frequency hopping, a transmitting node, such as a user equipment, would change the assigned frequency resource allocation from one time instant to another, in a controlled manner. Two generic types of hopping for Long Term Evolution (LTE) are standardized in 3GPP:                Type 1, where frequency hopping is based on explicit frequency hopping information in the scheduling grant.        Type 2, where frequency hopping is performed according to cell-specific hopping and/or mirroring patterns.        
For both types of frequency hopping defined above, inter-subframe hopping and intra-subframe hopping are possible. In inter-subframe hopping, a user equipment (UE) would change allocation every subframe as long as the grant is valid and frequency hopping is configured as shown in FIG. 1. Such mode of operation is typically straightforward to handle by the scheduler in the radio base station from a resource efficiency allocation perspective, because the frequency hopping resources in case of inter-subframe hopping do not cause any parts of the frequency spectrum to be unavailable for non-hopping user equipments, and as such both types of user equipments may easily co-exist over the whole BandWidth (BW) in a given Transmission Time Interval (TTI).
However, intra-subframe hopping may have detrimental effects on the frequency spectrum utilization as illustrated in FIG. 2. When a certain user equipment is configured for intra-subframe hopping, it means that it takes up one part of the bandwidth in the first slot of the subframe and another part of the bandwidth in the second slot of the subframe, and thereby makes two parts of the bandwidth unavailable for non-hopping users as illustrated by the black resources in FIG. 2. This will happen in all ills for which the grant is valid i.e. the first transmission attempt and all non-adaptive retransmissions and in case of semi-persistent scheduling for all first transmission attempts and non-adaptive retransmissions until semi-persistent scheduling is inactivated or the semi-persistent grant is updated.
In a radio communications network, hopping and non-hopping user equipments will typically be co-scheduled in the same TTI. A straightforward application of resource allocation for user equipments that utilizes frequency hopping in case of intra-subframe hopping or similar frequency hopping schemes may lead to inefficiencies in bandwidth utilization.